I’ve been thinking about adding a little tarot-inspired section to the website, perhaps twice a week. I should say straight away that I’m not pretending this is “real tarot”. I wouldn’t dare wander into the serious tarot world waving my little cards around as though I know what I’m doing. There are people who have studied tarot properly, its symbolism, history and all the deeper layers of meaning, and I have great respect for that. What I’m thinking about is something much lighter. More tarot-inspired than tarot itself. Almost like a little female empowerment deck, with motivational cards, pick-me-ups, reminders, and sometimes just something kind to land on when you’re having one of those days. If you’re already a member of the astrology site, I would simply add them in for free as part of it. People only into Tarot inspired cards can have a different membership. If you like them, lovely. If you don’t, just walk straight past them and carry on with the astrology. It is probably a terrible cliché to assume everyone interested in astrology must automatically like tarot. But quite a lot of us do seem to wander into both worlds at some point.
I bought my first tarot deck as a teenager. I remember going into the shop and the woman behind the counter being slightly spooky about the whole thing, telling me I had to choose my deck with intention and feel which one was calling to me. Of course, as a teenager, I was mainly thinking, “Which one has the prettiest pictures?” There wasn’t a tremendous amount of spiritual discernment going on. I wanted to shuffle the cards, pull one out and see whether something exciting was going to happen. It turned out I was absolutely terrible at tarot. I do have the Liz Greene tarot book and deck somewhere, although “somewhere” is doing a lot of work in that sentence because I currently have no idea where they are. Then in my early twenties I bought a mermaid tarot deck. Obviously. Because apparently at some point in your twenties you need mermaids involved. I loved that one mostly for the artwork. I would shuffle the cards randomly and pull one out, not particularly trying to be psychic, but because sometimes an image or a few words can catch you at exactly the right moment. That is really where this idea has come from.
I’m also tempted to make a mermaid-inspired set, because if there is one thing my twenties taught me, it’s that every emotional crisis improves slightly if a mermaid is involved.
On the website I may create sets of 22 cards, partly because there are 22 Major Arcana cards in traditional tarot, although these would not be traditional Major Arcana interpretations. I can put them into a gallery that displays the cards randomly, so whatever card appears first becomes “your” card for that visit, and then you can look through the rest afterwards if you want to. I also want to create themed sets. So if you are going through low confidence, feeling like an outsider, struggling with your mental health, feeling depressed, dealing with rejection, loneliness, change, grief, self-worth, starting again, or any of those difficult corners life occasionally backs us into, there could be a set designed around that theme. One of the themes I have already been working on is the Outsider. It can connect quite naturally with astrology as there are certain placements and transits describing periods where someone feels outside the normal social sphere. The outer planets can do that. Chiron can certainly do it. Bring Saturn into the mix and sometimes it can feel heavier because suddenly there is judgement, social expectation, stigma, rules, or the sense – you are somehow supposed to conform to something that doesn’t fit you.
It is actually quite a difficult theme to write well because you don’t want to turn genuine pain into a motivational tarot card. But sometimes people do feel terrible. Life is terrible for a while. So I want the cards to have a little more honesty in them. Not endless “You are a goddess, everything is wonderful!” because sometimes everything is very much not wonderful. More something to say: this moment is difficult, but it is a moment. Get through today. Tomorrow may feel different. Because on some of my own bad days over the years, I have sometimes thought that if something small had landed in front of me at the right moment – a sentence, a card, a reminder, anything – it might have helped me get through that one day. And often getting through one day is enough. Because very often the next day is better. Not magically perfect. Just better.
I may write a shorter introduction with each tarot-inspired set rather than the long astrology articles I usually create, because astrology pieces need much more explanation, background and depth. Normally I jot everything down first on my Kindle Scribe, all the themes and random thoughts, and then gradually expand them into proper posts. Years ago I bought well over 100 astrology books. I currently have around 30 physical astrology books sitting around with bookmarks sticking out of them everywhere because apparently I cannot read an astrology book without turning it into a hedgehog. But I’ve moved with the times too. What matters most to me now is how much useful information I can leave behind on the site. I keep going back through old posts, editing them, improving them, adding things I have learned since and finding better ways to explain certain ideas. Back-editing probably takes longer than writing sometimes. Then, of course, I learn something else and think, “Oh, I could make this better.” So back I go again. These days I try to judge a post more by whether there is enough information in it to actually help somebody understand the theme.
I would like to leave as much useful work on the site as possible before I eventually retire, if I ever properly retire. I’m about twelve years away from sixty, so in my head I have this slightly long-term plan that I should have most of the major work, rewriting and editing done by then. Although knowing me I’ll probably reach sixty, discover another astrology book and decide the entire website needs editing again. Anyway. Back to my pretend tarot. I’m thinking November for the first sets, although I need to see whether I can build enough themes first and get the format working properly. Then I’ll probably give it six to twelve months and see whether people actually enjoy it. If everyone ignores it completely, that is fine too. I’ll take the hint. But I quite like the idea of there being this small corner of the site where, every few days, you can shuffle into a page, pull something random and perhaps find exactly the sentence you needed that day. Not serious tarot. Nor fortune telling. Just a little symbolic nudge from the universe. Or from me pretending to be the universe for five minutes.